The Company Christmas Party

My company Christmas party was on 9 December. It was at the super posh Hyatt Regency Cumberland just around the corner from our office.

We all arrived to a sort of cocktail hour with little snacks and beverages of both the alcoholic and non-alcoholic variety. There was music playing from fabulous CDs compiled by yours truly! The was also a professional photographer to snap our pictures for posterity. (All pictures in this blog post, however, were taken either by myself, or my friend, Amaury.)

Me with the lovely Luciana:

The wonderful Anna:
Lucia... isn't she just fabulous!

From left to right: Dawn (who sits next to me at work), Louisa (from reception) and Penny (who sits across from me).

Me, hanging with the monsters. Er, I mean boys! Cristiano on the left and Evandro on the right.

We finally sat down to dinner and a noisier dinner you never did hear! There were six tables of ten people each. One of the tables decided they needed to start chanting about how great they were. So started very LOUD chants of "TABLE FOUR! TABLE FOUR!" Of course, that couldn't be allowed to stand, so other tables started chanting. This was NOT a calm, orderly dinner. The tables were nicely

decorated, though.

The starter wasn't good. The options were trout (Most of you know my feelings on the matter. Fish belong in the sea, not on my plate.) or foie gras. My feelings about THAT sort of nonsense are equally strong, but I went with foie gras as at least it wasn't fish. Unfortunately, it was beyond nasty. So I just ate the bread that came with it.

The main was either turbot (again with the feelings) or Angus beef. The beef was DELICIOUS! So tasty and perfectly cooked. It had black truffle jus which was very tasty. MOST delicious.

For dessert there was either a walnut p

arfait or sticky toffee pudding. Bet you can guess what I picked! Unfortunately it was a let down. While it was very tasty indeed, it was definitely NOT sticky toffee pudding. It was just an ordinary plain cake which they had put a few dates in, topped with a drizzle of toffee sauce and then slapped some icecream on. As you may or may not know, this is NOT sticky toffee pudding. But if one viewed it as simply a nice pudding, then it was good.

There was also a gift exchange. Each person bought a £10 gift, wrapped the gift and brought it to the office. We arranged the gifts under the tree, then before dinner each person chose a gift. We kept the gift under our chair until the end of dinner then we opened it. Now here is the fun part! I have been drooling over Le Cruset for AGES. I especially have been drooling over the mini casserole dishes (I showed you some of these when you were here or I was there, I think.). Well, that is what I got. Even better, it was a turqoisey blue colour. Thrilled!!!!!!!! Even in a silly gift exchange, one can be blessed.

Here's the amazing and wonderful Iara! She's lovely. She works in accounts and I've been to her house for dinner.

This is our boss's hubby, Luis. Very nice man and hilariously funny!

And here's our boss Jacqueline with LO (pronounced Elio).

I had asked Filipe to burn a CD with some forro music. He loves forro as much as I do. So I slipped the CD to the event planner and told her to play it after dinner. VOILA! Spontaneous forro dancing!

Amaury managed to snap Dawn dancing with Alam. Oooh, lala!

It was a fantastic Christmas party! Best company party I've been to!